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I give up the creeped out recoiling in my muscles from times when they tried to cop a feel, got too close, tried to sip some shakti when they should have cleaned up their act and relied on their own resources.

I give up losing my sense of humour when it could turn everything around in a sweet second. Because, come on, it’s usually pretty funny.

I give up that gross-whelmed feeling that comes after you read any women’s magazine –– of being too fat, too short, too normal, too frizzy, too hungry, and generally not well-lit everywhere I go.

I give up staying up too late because I think I owe something more to the day that I just gave my everything to. I give up being down on myself because I still harbour some resentment. I give up the resentment.

I give up allergies, picking my skin, checking just one more email, going too long without eating, and over-working.

I give up working within the exploitive ideologies of capitalism that are fed to us from all directions. I will do it for the love, and I will do it lovingly.

I give up the only impulse that ever gets me in trouble: the drive to strive, to earn my place, like, ON THE PLANET. Because I am really here. And I’m not giving up.

My life has next to zero resemblance of what I thought it would look like when I started to act like an adult (I just snorted when I typed that.)

I was supposed to marry my soul mate the first time around. I was supposed to have won something super shiny by now like an Oscar, (And the winner for best documentary is…) or have scored a car in a raffle because God wanted to bonus me for being such a spiritual overachiever.

In my new-to-adulthood mind (about the same time I was sleeping with much older men to test out my power and learn about wine. [I learned nothing about wine.]) I envisioned myself going to a lot of cocktail parties wearing all those big rings I was collecting. I was going to speak fluent French, not just enough to swear in Québécois or order crepes.

In my incredible future I would have been doing yoga so consistently for so many years, that by now I’d be a sinewy little waif with abs of asana steel….wearing one of my cocktail rings in yoga class. So chill about my flexi awesomeness.

I would have been to Fiji and seen an opera at The Met by now. I was also going to have two divinely-timed children. (I went for quality over quantity.) Oh and I was going to have the same friends forever andever. And I was going to paint like Rothko.

None of those things have happened, some never will. (Except, I always knew that I’d have a little boy and he’d be incredible.) I may or may not get to Fiji this lifetime. But you know, I think I’d rather just keep going to Paris for crepes.

Every “image” I had of my “ideal” life has been interrupted, derailed, splattered on the road to this sometimes way too fucking complicated, patience-of-Job, deeply deep andBEAUTIFUL life that I find myself in. CORRECTION: I didn’t “find” myself here. I made choices to be here — right where I am. One choice at a time.

Every time you choose to go for a “feeling” instead of an “image”, you’re making a courageous choice.

Here’s what I’d say to her, to me in my tube skirt and cowboy boots, chugging chocolate milk on a Saturday morning for a tequila hangover:

How do you want your future tofeel?

And she would have replied, without hesitation, “I want my life to feel AMAZING!” And she wouldn’t have had a clue what that was going to “look” like. “Ideal” would have been a mystery to unfold instead of a trail of milestones.

And she would have known that…

the detours and interruptions are warning bells and magical spells.

Choose to unfold. It’s way less predictable, less tidy, it’s highly inconvenient. And it’s where the power is.

The kind of beautiful, gorgeous power you’ve been craving to feel your entire life.

It feels interminable. Like you’ll never get out. Like it’s never…going…to…end. That’s the nature of hell. It’s not the pain that drives you insane, it’s the fear that the pain could go on and on.

The first thing to tell yourself when you’re in hell: This pain WILL end.

I find this works for most varieties of hell. Physical pain. Heart break. Mental torture. Long road trips when you’re forced to listen to sports talk radio.

You probably won’t believe it when you remind yourself thatThis pain WILL end. And you may have nine reasons why you’ll never “fully” get over it. (And maybe 4.5 of them could be legit.) But your exact coordinates in hell, that specific degree of pain, that particular agony — all that will shift.

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